The 66% Solution

Yes, that is Sherlock Holmes reference in the title. Or a reference to an 80’s direct to TV movie called The Peanut Butter Solution that nobody else in the world has ever seen before. Anyway, the issue goes like this – collectively the project is behind schedule. So I made an Executive Decision (another movie that nobody else in the world has seen – and if you say you have, you’re a damn liar) and called a meeting.The crux was thus, we could either push on ahead full speed and get the content done, but have very little polish and/or testing done to it. OR we could focus on the levels that we have (and the Cliffs/Castle Rooftops level I’m building now) and really try to get those all spit and polish in time for 11-15. So now we are making the first half or so (and now the title makes sense, hmm?). Of course, it is a little depressing to not have the finished project on time, but hard decisions had to be made and I think that this will be right one in the long run.

-Finally got the compile to the Tester. With 3 weeks left I think this may be a “Thing that went wrong” in the Post Mortem. Anyway, I have to refer to the Tester with a Capital T. So he loaded up the game and was playing, and as the Designer I of course wanted to watch. I think the first time a player lays hands on a project says a lot about how well the game works. So he starts jumping around and off of things and doing a lot of really silly stuff. I have 2 thoughts cross my mind, the first of which is that I have a tester that doesn’t know how to play games. The second was that my game is really hard or something.So I continue to watch him and I realize what he is doing – he is trying to break it. He’s not playing to play, he’s playing to Test. That’s why I refer to him with a Capital T. Once I realized that (and saw the Animator across from me realizing the same thing) we knew we had someone that would test every wall and floor and enemy and probably every script and our hopes of a polished game increased exponentially. Invariably when the Tester does find something and he then proceeds to try again and again to repeat the error before managing to repeat it 3 more times. The Tester then writes me a note explaining what happened. Then he drew a bloody Map to show me exactly where it happened so that I can fix it. So, yeah that’s cool.